UTC Parking Compared to other Universities

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (UTC/The Loop) When compared to other universities in Tennessee it is clear that we are not the only campus with crowded parking lots. In fact, we are actually “average” compared to UT Knoxville, University of Memphis, MTSU, and Tennessee Tech.

UTC General Lot 30

Current enrollment at UTC is at 11,660 for Fall of 2012. Including the General parking lots, Reserved Parking lots, and spaces on the street UTC has a total of about 5,190 parking spaces available. Meaning campus has about 45 percent of the spots needed for everyone to park, not including staff and faculty.

“I feel like every university probably has deals with parking issues, but from what I’ve experienced at UTC I also feel like we should come up with ways to solve our parking issue,” said Laura Richmond, a senior at UTC.

School Name

Enrollment

Spaces Available

Parking demand met

UTC

11,660

5,194

45%

UT Knoxville

27,018

17,267

64%

U of Memphis

22,365

9,200

41%

MTSU

23,022

12,000

52%

TN Tech

11,700

4,668

40%

Tennessee Tech is closest to UTC in enrollment at 11,700. They have about 4,668 parking spaces total on campus, including street parking. This means Tennessee Tech has about 40 percent of the spaces they need for just students.

The University of Memphis comes in second place for the worst parking. With 22,365 students and only 9,200 parking spots they only have about 41 percent of the parking spaces they need for students.

“Parking on campus is just shy of neglect. We only have a small part of the spots we need. The rest of the students are just expected to find their own spot in the surrounding neighborhoods,” said Drake Pertuit, a junior at the University of Memphis.

Middle Tennessee State University is currently building a new parking garage on campus that will add about 900 more parking spaces to their now 12,000. Currently they have about 52 percent of the spaces needed but the new garage will up give them 56 percent. For more information on the new garage click this link.

MTSU is in the process of building a new garage that will add an extra 900 parking spaces for students

UT Knoxville has more parking spaces available than any of the schools above, but students still seem fairly frustrated. Like most universities, UT Knoxville oversells their parking passes far over the amount of spaces actually available.

” The parking at UTK is unorganized and is not built to accommodate all the students that need parking. They have 1 parking spot to every 10 parking passes that they sell to the students,” said Heather Michalek, a senior at UT Knoxville. “The price of a parking pass is overpriced for the amount of spots we are provided to choose from,” said Michalek.

UT Knoxville has about 64 percent of the parking spaces they need to accommodate all students.

As we can see from this data it is clear that parking is a problem not just at UTC but at most of our surrounding universities as well.

“It’s something that people always complain about but no action is taken,” said Richmond.”